The Game And Living Of Life

I meant to post this last night but forgot. Mr. Moon and the boys found that little anole outside on the front-door screen and rescued him from the cold and brought him in. We put him in one of the potted plants in the library and I filled a very shallow jar lid with water and settled it into the dirt and I think he'll live. 
As long as Maurice doesn't get her teeth on the poor little thing. 

August and Levon were good little fellows last night. Levon was very tired but managed to stay awake through supper.

They made me laugh so hard while we were eating. I can't remember one darn thing they said that I found so humorous but I'm sure it was all hilarious. 

After baths which Boppy oversaw they brushed their teeth and got in bed. That room was chilly last night. We sort of desperately need new windows. But all was well. I covered them up with a sheet, two quilts, a down comforter, a cotton blanket, and two soft throws. Yes, it was overkill but they loved it. They cuddled up together and I'm sure they were warm as little puppies in a box by the fireplace. I didn't ask them if they wanted stories nor did I ask them what stories they might want. I just picked out two and read them and they were both quiet and seemed to enjoy them. 
That's the tax for staying at Mer and Bop's and getting spoiled- you have to listen to a story that Mer reads. 

I tucked them up tight and gave each of them a little kiss on the cheek and they were asleep within minutes. I'd told them that they were not allowed to wake up Boppy before 7:30 and were not allowed to watch TV until he got up. He reported that when he got up at 7:15, he went into the Glen Den to find them on the couch, NOT WATCHING TV but waiting for him like the two good kids they are. 
Soon TV watching commenced and Boppy made them peanut butter and apple snacks with orange juice so that they didn't starve before their sloth of a grandmother got up and made them pancakes and bacon. I guess they were starving by the time that was ready because they ate an inordinate amount. They each ate more pancakes than I did and the same number as Boppy and was told that I needed to make more next time. 
Noted. 

After breakfast, we played a rousing game of Life. I have no idea why but I had never played a game of Life in my life until over a year ago when I played with August and Levon and Jessie. Of course I did not remember one rule or even one thing about how to play but August knows all and he shared his knowledge with us. 
That was the most chaotic, stressful game I may have ever played and it took over an hour. If August wasn't sure about something I'd look it up because our game is so old there aren't any directions in the box and that became a thing because we'd often been playing it wrong and had to readjust. Mr. Moon got into it a bit more than perhaps he should have due to the game being about money and careers and so forth and Levon was the banker but Glen and August kept doing the actual banking and I was just sitting there doing my best to keep up. 

"Could we just deal with one issue at a time?" I finally asked. It did no good. Issues came thick and fast and were dealt with in completely absurd order and I think I may have gone around the same part of the board twice, getting lost, as it were, on the Highway of Life. 
August won to his great delight, Mr. Moon came in second, I came in third, and Levon came in last. He was a good sport about it. August has his grandfather's competitive nature, it would seem. I'm mostly like, "Aren't we done yet?"

Jessie came out and got her babies in the early afternoon. The roads are still icy in some places but she was very careful and all was well. The snow has not all disappeared by any means. 

That's the same view as a picture I took yesterday morning of the front yard from the swing porch. And that was less than an hour ago so thirty six hours later, there is still snow on the ground. 

Both of those were taken this afternoon. And it's not going to be gone tomorrow morning, either. Temperature is supposed to be down in the mid twenties again tonight. And then for three MORE nights. 

But here we are, cozy and warm. When Glen turned on the gas logs in the Glen Den, August pointed out that they are just like Bunsen Burners. He is right and now I will never not see that. 

Two nights ago I cooked some of the redfish that Mr. Moon brought back from Louisiana and was absolutely shocked at how delicious it was. I made a panko and parmesan coating and air-fried it and if I've ever had a better piece of delicately-flavored white fish I can't remember it. The funny thing is, is that redfish was considered a trash fish for a very long time which means it was a fish that no one wanted to eat. People DID eat them but they were certainly not considered high up on the gourmet scale. In the eighties, the cajun chef, Paul Prudhomme came up with a cajun-seasoned version of redfish and that dish became so popular that they became over-fished. So I'd always thought that it had taken a cooking method that involved a lot of spice and blackening to make the fish more edible but boy, was I wrong. That is some sweet, sweet meat. 
Tonight I'm going to make redfish augratin and I think it's going to be amazing. 

Here's a picture of the boys hugging their grandfather before they left. 

Three of my beautiful boys. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Has Hell Frozen Over?

 This is what I saw this morning when I got up and opened the door from my bathroom onto the swing porch. 

I have lived sixty-three out of the seventy years of my life in Florida and never once have I seen anything like this happen here. We've gotten snow before but never anything over an inch as far as I recall. And it always fell, melted, and disappeared within a few hours. 

It's 5:11 p.m. and my backyard is still mostly covered in white and the sun has been shining almost all day. As Glen just said to me, "It's so weird to look out and see snow."
I agreed that it very much is. 

We had lost power in the night but our generator took over. I love that machine so much. Our cell and internet were out though which was extremely frustrating. It snowed here and we couldn't tell anyone! I was able to get a few texts and pictures from the kids and everyone was just blissed out and having a great time playing in the snow. 

I got the little video from Jessie that I posted earlier and it made me laugh so much. We have no sleds here, of course, but it turns out that a serving tray or a cookie sheet works fine for little boys with tiny little butts. And also, that Sophie must be part husky. She was so joyous, pulling August and Levon down the road on a baking sheet. 
People all over Tallahassee (and all over north Florida!) are sledding on everything from boogie boards to surfboards. 
The power, internet, and cell all came back on pretty quickly. I had worried that our power company would have no idea how to find and fix ice-related power outages. But they figured it out. 

Here are a few pictures from our yard. 

If my garden survives, it'll be a miracle.

Glen and I stayed in and were cozy little lovebirds for the most part. It was a very good day for that. We would go outside now and then, to feed the birds or just see what we could see. The birds were ravenous and Glen threw their feed on the snow because the feeder was filled with what looked like nice fluffy snow but which was actually a frozen block of ice. 

Not a good picture because I took it from behind the porch screen. They were so skittish. But you can get an idea of how many of them came around. 

Turns out that Tallahassee schools are closed tomorrow and both Vergil and Jessie are going to be working. Jessie probably overnight and into tomorrow. Babies don't wait. 

So we have two little snow monkeys here with us to spend the night and play tomorrow. 

I know that all of this amazement about a few inches of snow probably makes many of you who live where it snows every year and in far greater amounts probably makes you laugh but I have to say that it's sort of like living in Ohio and waking up one morning to find a beautiful, warm, sparkling ocean with a clean, white-sand beach bordering it in your backyard. It is almost that shocking for us to wake up to snow. 

Not going to talk about the other stuff here today because for the first time in weeks, I have let my fear and worry and anxiety go a bit and have been concentrating on the pure joy of the absurdity of our sudden winter. I imagine that by the end of the week I'll be sick and tired of it all. It's supposed to get down to 21 degrees tonight so I think we'll probably wake up to the same snow we went to bed with. 

I'm going to go make hamburgers and cut up vegetables for the guys. I wonder what sort of devilment they'll get into while they're here. 
Probably none. They are good little boys. Mostly. 

Love...Ms. Moon

 

Things That Happen When It's Going To Snow In Florida

 That's what the sky looked like at 9:00 this morning in Tallahassee. I was overwhelmed by the drama of it. Every time I stopped at a light I took another picture. 

So even though the sky looked like that and it was about 50 degrees in the sun and there was sun, we had been been promised "wintery precipitation" including snow and by god, everyone wanted it. 
Lots of people lost their damn minds. You'd think we were facing eight feet of snow along with tons of ice, falling directly onto our roads and yes, we are all going to die and so we need to get to Publix and buy everything we'd buy for a hurricane but more stuff because we don't really know what you need for snow preparation so best to buy everything. There were cars lined up, waiting for a parking place in the lot. 
SNOWPOCALPYSE! 

Y'all. My brain is still so scrambled and I am still so far away in space where if you scream no one can hear you and I am no good for anything. 

Wait, WAIT! I forgot to say that Mr. Moon did indeed get home last night, before midnight, and I was so very glad to see him. I believe he had an excellent time. 

It was very difficult to get out of our bed early this morning to go to pottery but I did and it was pretty cold, far colder than fifty degrees but I didn't want to let Jessie down. I was absolutely in a fog in class and actually dropped a jar of glaze but caught it in my lap and thankfully, I was wearing my apron and so it wasn't a disaster but that's the sort of things I was doing. 

We went to lunch after class, to a Thai/Asian place and it was good and then we went to the Publix right next door but I had to leave and wait outside because there were too many people and I just kept getting in the way. We were running a little late and Jessie had to pick up the boys early because of Snowpocalypse and I went with her. I was so glad to see them. They were a little glad to see me. August especially didn't want me to leave because he felt the need to discuss Minecraft with me which I know nothing about and have no interest in discussing but I think his mother is probably exhausted by the thought of discussing Minecraft. When August latches on to something, he doesn't let go. 

Here are some pictures.

Sophie really is the sweetest love. She such an excellent cuddler.

In the last few hours the temperature has indeed dropped and we are now getting sleet, I guess. Wintery precipitation, as promised. The kids are texting that it's snowing in Tallahassee but none here yet. Small frozen bits of water are definitely falling from the sky but it's not snow. I didn't buy one thing at Publix so I hope that we don't die of deprivation. 
Pretty sure we won't. 
I'm cooking redfish tonight which Mr. Moon brought back from Louisiana. I have very little experience with redfish but I'll do my best. 

The soup last night turned out to be pretty delicious and the bread was not brick-like and the flavor of it went with the soup very well. Not a failure. 

Here's a Florida snowball. 

Hopefully we shall all survive through the night. 

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. It is now snowing in Lloyd. 

And the snowballs are getting bigger. 

Dang. 

 

P.P.S. Rachel just sent a picture of her brother standing outside in Pensacola which is west of here and I swear to god, there are at least eight inches of snow on top of his car. 
This might not be a joke. 

I Feel Sick And My Eyes Are Dead

All right. Let's check in. 
How are you? I mean really, really, how ARE you?

I can't seem to figure out how I feel which is probably because I am disassociating my ass off. My mind has taken to the skies because it really does not want me to be here on this earth, in this country, on this day. It is the day that so many of us simply could not believe would ever be a reality (again) and yet, knew in our souls that it really could happen. 

Also, I feel sick. Physically sick. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

And my mind isn't working very well. Writing this little bit of nothingness has already taken me at least twenty minutes. I have teared up at least fifteen times today but then the dull, gray-and-heavy-as-concrete curtain falls once again and I'm cut off from any real thinking, any real feeling. 

I didn't watch any of the inauguration. Of course. But I have read a little bit about it. It does us no good to ignore what happens, what he says, what we are facing, what we are dealing with here. 
Elon Musk rocking the ol' Nazi salute for one thing. 
Now see- that's the sort of thing we can hang our hats on and say, "I told you." 
Isn't it funny how even though we predict things, we can still be shocked when they happen? 

No. It is not funny at all. I would so much rather be wrong. 

Here's what I did today: 
I took out the compost and picked greens. There were small pieces of ice in my greens. I almost froze my hands off. I have no idea what five nights with temperatures in the twenties is going to do to my garden. 
I folded and put away one small load of laundry.
I pulled apart and stashed in their box all 998 pieces of the puzzle I just finished. 
I started another one that Jessie gave me for Christmas. 
I made garbanzo bean, sweet potato, greens, and venison sausage soup which is far more tasteless than those ingredients should possibly be able to produce. It's like there's some ingredient that I've completely forgotten about that obviously should be in there. 

Bland.

I made a loaf of oat bran and molasses bread so dense that I'll probably lose a tooth on it. 
I made the bed.
While I did these things, I listened to about five hours of an audio book. "Broken Harbor" by Tana French. Nothing like a good murder story to distract you. 

That's it. I have no idea what I did for the rest of the day but I'm sure it involved mindless internet crap. 

My husband is on the road home and should be here around eleven tonight. Supposedly I'm going to pottery tomorrow which is also the day we're supposed to get some sort of that promised "wintery precipitation." 

Here's a camellia. 

Here are some more. 

I think I'll feel better when my husband gets in. At least I won't have that to worry about. 

Tell me how you've dealt with today, if you want to. I am curious and I do care. 

Man. This is some weird shit. 

Love...Ms. Moon

No Title

Last night when I was making my Kung Pao Tofu, I went to grab a piece of ginger root I knew I had and to my great disappointment, found that it had dried out and was shriveled and also had a little green fuzz on it so I put that in the compost and thought, "Well hell. Now what?"
And then I remembered the pot I have on the back porch steps where I've had ginger growing for at least a year. I started it with a piece of grocery store ginger root which came up and I watered it now and then. I even had a few blooms come up this summer. It's all dead looking now but I thought that maybe I could dig around in the dirt and see if I had anything and by golly- look at that! I was so pleased. There's more too. This year I'm going to make a little bed in the kitchen garden and plant more. I can use some of the bricks I've found in the area I've been weeding by the front fence and gate to delineate  it. 

Speaking of that space, you know I've been wondering what to put in there. When we moved here, there were what looked like some very, very cool, lush plants that grew abundantly. 
The abundant part was correct. 
After a few years I realized that these plants were horrible and would take over the world and when you pull them they emit a dust-like substance that gags you and makes you cough. I think we have almost eliminated them but as you know, many other invasive plants have rushed to fill in space left by them. Lately I have been thinking that perhaps I should plant Saw Palmettos there. They are native and hardy.

This seems almost perfect for my needs but there is one drawback- the stalks of the fronds are the very reason they are called "saw" palmettos. They are sharp-toothed and can rip tender flesh. However, they are very good wildlife plants, offering birds their berries and if I don't plan on getting in there and trimming them, the stalks can be as saw-toothed as they want to be. 
I have been around these palms my entire life. They are so familiar to me that I barely see them. They grow in forests and woods and are salt-tolerant so grow well at the coast. When I was a kid, we'd cut the stalks and run our trusty pocketknives down the sides, shaving off the teeth, whittling a point at the end and use them to toast marshmallows on. 
We were tough. 
I once saw a whole bunch of blue jays, flocking around some saw palmettos, flying crazily and sometimes falling from the fronds. The palmetto berries had fermented on the plant and those birds were having a fine old time, getting drunk on palmetto berry wine. 

Well, it's something to think about. The saw-toothed edges are not nearly as large or dangerous as those on the Canary Island Date palms that I used to have. I cursed those things a billion times until the power of my hatred caused them to die and Glen dug them up and we burned them.

Well, besides thinking about palmettos, here's my big accomplishment for the day. 

I finally finished that jigsaw puzzle. The accident I had, spilling vegetable broth on it when I was doing my pre-colonoscopy fasting, turned out not to be as destructive as I thought it might be. Turns out that the pieces have two layers, a plain cardboard backing layer and the top layer that has the picture piece on it. That layer is thick enough to use to set into the puzzle and in the end, I was only missing two pieces. A thousand piece puzzle may be more of a challenge than I really need. Or not. I enjoyed it a lot, even though it took me at least six months to do. 

Mr. Moon will be home tomorrow if all goes as planned. I'll be glad to get him home, not only because I miss him but also because of this weird polar weather we're supposed to be getting. Snow? Possibly. Sleet? Could be. Frozen rain? Most likely. Ice storm?
Hold on a minute.
Ice storm? What even is that? Area schools are definitely closing on Wednesday. As I said last night, this is just about going to shut us down around here. Jessie has to work on Wednesday and she joked that if the roads are icy, she could probably find some crampons somewhere in their house and hike to work. It's not that far. We'll have to remember to run the water, especially the garden sprinklers and garage spigots so the pipes don't freeze. I have no idea if my beautiful greens can survive five or six nights of freezing in a row. I surely would hate to lose them. 

So tonight will be my last night alone in the house, alone in the bed. I haven't been entirely alone in the bed. Maurice has been regularly sleeping curled up next to my legs. When I got up last night to pee, she followed me into the bathroom and then followed me back out again. We both got in bed and went back to sleep. 
I have to say, I found that very touching. 

I sat down at the piano today and once again, I enjoyed it so much that I chastised myself for only doing this when Glen's away. Am I that worried about how embarrassed I'd be for even my husband to hear how badly I play?

Probably. Okay, yeah. Most definitely. 
Well, sigh. 

I think I'm stalling here, not wanting to discuss the fact that this is the last day of Joe Biden's presidency. 
Joe- you done good. Thank you with all of my heart for governing in such a way that I did not feel that every morning I needed to reach for my phone to see what new terrible thing had happened overnight. I've felt like we're in good hands. And we have been. 
Tomorrow that changes. 

I have no idea, no predictions about what is about to happen except that I am quite sure that none of us can imagine the depths to which this country is going to sink. Every day will be like a game of limbo- how low can we go? I remember a friend of mine who, in the clutches of horrible addiction said to me, "Mary, everyone says you have to reach bottom before you can ask for help. What no one tells you is that there is no bottom."

The leaders we are about to get are no less addicted to power and money than my friend was addicted to crack. There is no bottom for them. They will do whatever it takes to get that hit of more money, more power, more adulation.

I believe that anger and tears will be in order tomorrow. And then we figure out how to go from there. 

Meanwhile, let's all hold each others' hands. Tightly. We hold each other up. We hold each other close. 
We hold each other. 

Love...Ms. Moon

At Least I Did Something

It has been so dreary here today. It's rained on and off and I think we may be getting rain fairly constantly from now until tomorrow and then, perhaps more. It has not been cold today, just gray and wet. As you can see from my weather widget we do have a chance of snow on Tuesday or Wednesday or, as I think they are calling it, at least some sort of frozen precipitation. As you can only imagine, this is quite rare for our little part of the world and it's been front page news for days. You'd think we were looking at four feet of snow in which case it would be a problem as we have no snow plows or anything like that. Snow shovels are unknown here. I had no idea there was such a thing as an ice scraper for car windshields until I moved to Denver and that was an unpleasant shock if you want to know the truth. I knew nothing about cold weather. I'd been living in Central Florida for years and if it got down to freezing there it was an event. I didn't know that gloves were a necessity or boots or a really warm coat. I also didn't know that you could not wash your hair and then go out in the snow without drying it because it turns out, hair can freeze! 
Oh, I was so innocent. 
There was a girl from Hawaii who lived next door to me in the dorm and she and I were constantly amazed and confused. I remember we both took ice-skating as a physical education class and we both sucked. I may have told this story before but whatever- one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me was that the ice skating arena (is that what you call it?) fell in before we took our final exam on skates. The roof literally fell in.
Phew! 
There is a god! 

That was a hard time for me. Depression with a big D hit me like a truck and I now realize that it was somewhat of a miracle that I survived. When it first hit, I spent many, many hours in my dorm room, listening to "Blue" and embroidering a denim shirt for my back-home boyfriend who, actually, had broken up with me before I left but I had refused to believe he meant it because how could he not love me? I loved him so much. And I don't say I "thought" I loved him. I did. Maybe not in the way that you should run away and get married because of but with that insane power of first love where you feel like you are his and he is yours. At least it was that way for me. So surely I could get him back and make him realize his mistake by embroidering him this shirt and I cried and listened to Joni singing about having a river to skate away on and it was dark all the time and cold, so cold and he never called, he never wrote. 
He did, however, sleep with one of my best friends who was already married and had a baby at the age of nineteen and that story only gets worse and we'll just...stop here. 

What in hell was I talking about? 
Oh yeah. It might snow in Tallahassee. 

So worry about my porch plants has been making me quite anxious. We didn't bring them in this year as you may know and I covered them up but from some branches sticking out of a few plants that looked dead and gone, I knew that this wasn't the best situation or solution and with it about to be down in the twenties for a few nights, I figured I had to do something about it and today I did. It's been so hard lately for me to do anything. To get motivated to move or step out of my ennui for any amount of time. Even something like tidying up my back porch table and putting a clean tablecloth on it has seemed like an impossible task. 
But this morning I set myself the goal of doing just that and giving my front porch plants some love and attention and I did both of those things and I feel better. Not like I now want to go and do other things in that vein, but just... better. At least I did those things. 
I trimmed back my banyan tree which had gotten sorely bitten by the freezes we already had and uncovered all the plants, trimmed the ones that needed it, pulled the ones I could manage closer to the porch wall, watered them all and re-covered them more snuggly. I was amazed to find that my bird's nest ferns don't look to have been bothered in the least by the cold weather, nor has the ponytail palm. The philodendrons too, look sturdy and well. But I covered them all up and brought a few plants inside where they will definitely be warm. One of these was a kalanchoe that I dug up in the woods in Roseland. It's grown way too leggy and when I put it back out I definitely need to put it somewhere it can get more sun. Also, I want to do some leaf propagation now so perhaps I will have some new baby plants this summer. 

And obviously, it was very thirsty. As were all the plants out there. I have been a very bad plant mama except for my nursery plants- the ones I brought home from Roseland or started from mango seeds. They have been coddled and tended but are definitely not getting enough light. 
It is the season of darkness for them, poor things. 
I brought in a begonia and it, too, is so droopy. 

Please come back, honey, I croon to it. 
And these begonias- well. They are fine. 

I swept some of the leaves off the front porch and I took the trimmings to the burn pile and returned the garden cart to where it belongs and the loppers too. 

I'm glad to have gotten that done. 

Glen seems to be having a fantastic time. Today they hunted ducks and then caught some big redfish. I mean- what could possibly be better? Hunting AND fishing on the same day? Here's a picture he just sent me.

Is that not glorious?

And I'm fine and in a very decent mood, despite the gloomy, dripping skies. I love my cozy house and am quite content. My soup last night was interesting. When Glen's not here I feel no need to restrain myself when it comes to throwing things in a pot together. I sent him a picture and told him that I'd put everything in the refrigerator in it except the cat food and that was almost the truth. Perhaps next time I'll be more hesitant to add leftover salad but the vinegar just gave the soup that little pop that it needed. 
Haha!
By the way, I hate the word "pop" used like that when describing food, decorating, or clothing. I have no idea why but it just seems like by the second time I heard it I was already exhausted by it. 

Tonight I am making the Kung Pao Tofu and these are going in it.

Two different types of Chinese cabbage. No, the recipe does not call for any greens but so what? There are no Kung Pao police as far as I know. 

I can't talk about what's coming up in two days. I just can't. Please, y'all. Let's take care of each other. I am not sure what that is going to look like but we have to do what we can. And we should spend as much time outside as possible and remember, as Ross said, to look up. Even when the sky is gray. Look up. Know there is light behind the grayness. 

Or something like that. 

Also, grow something, bake something, create something, read something, embroider something and listen to Joni Mitchell and cry, if need be.

Love...Ms. Moon

In Which I Talk Like I'm On Speed But Definitely Am Not

 The sky was so blue, the air so crisp that I hung my sheets and towels and a few other things on the line today. When you have the choice of whether to hang laundry outside or dry it inside in a machine, it feels like luxury to take the time to carry it out, pin it up neatly and in a sort of order, and then bring it back when it's dry, folded and sweet-smelling in the basket. 

Glen was on his way to Louisiana by the time I got up, of course. He wrote me that he was in a brand new billion dollar truck (NOT A TESLA) with a doctor and a dentist sitting in front of him. "I'm covered!" he said. 
I replied, "Where's the psychiatrist?" 
I know he's happy and that makes me happy and I've felt quite positive about life in general all day except for everything having to do with what's about to happen and what little I do read freaks me out and reminds me of the orange toddler's first term when I constantly thought, "Well, things can't get any worse," only to find out that the entire four years should have been labeled, How Low Can We Go? because there was no bottom to the baseness and idiocy and cruelty and...well. You know. 

Aside from that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? 

But in my tiny world things were okay except that I think I had an insanity episode. Not really insanity. Just more like a situation that, when over, I thought, what was I doing? What was I thinking? What was I saying? 

Here's what happened: The little strip mall where I pick up my hormones has a few other stores in it. I'd talked to Jessie and she said that the little Indian/Asian store there had some nice things, especially fresh ginger and also, samosas. So I thought I'd just walk down there. I wasn't exactly sure where in the line of shops it was but I passed this place. 

That wasn't it, surely, but it did say "international" and also, I obviously wasn't really thinking. And I went inside, only to realize that no, definitely not.   

That was almost the sum total of the goods in the store and the only person there was a man whose age I would not hazard to guess. He looked to be African to me and he had a true dignity about him. His long-sleeved khaki shirt was starched and ironed and I wasn't sure how to proceed. Looking back, I should have said, "I'm sorry. I'm in the wrong store," and left. 
Did I do that? 
No. I did not. 

I started looking at the items he had for sale which, as you can see were few in number and many of them were different forms of the same food, especially those coming from the yam. He also had some fresh yams in a box. Not our sweet-potato yams but an African yam. 
"Can I help you find anything?" he asked. 
"No, no. I'm just...looking," I said. But he came out from behind the counter and started explaining what different things were to me. Those containers of red liquid down there on the left? Palm oil. 
My only knowledge of any sort of African food comes straight from Alexander McCall Smith's series of novels about the Number One Ladies Detective Agency. And yes! Palm oil is very much mentioned! I recognized a few other things from Mma Precious Ramotswe's kitchen. And as he showed me his different products- breakfast cereals, sardines in cans, grapefruit drinks, Ovaltine, fufu, cassava, more yams in different forms, beans, spices, etc., I really got into it. I asked him questions. He answered them all. I told him about my mango tree. We discussed the American diet. ("So much meat!") I told him that I realized that much of the food we southerners eat here has its roots in Africa. He nodded. I mean, it was really fun and I enjoyed it all but I think that at some point, I just became stupid. Like, Mary, shut the fuck up. I believe he may have tired of me. I would have tired of me. 

Finally, I bought a packet of spices and another small bag of what he told me were treats made for celebrations, especially Christmas. They were called chin chin. He said he would like to hear what I thought of the spices and the treat so, as soon as I bought the items, I opened the bag of chin chin. I offered him some but he politely declined and I tried some. They were different but somehow familiar too. I asked him if, when he eats chin chin, he thinks about what Christmas felt like for him as a child. He said he did. 
Finally, our transactions were truly done and I gathered my courage and asked if I could possibly take his picture for my blog. He had no idea what a blog was so I showed him mine on my phone. I reassured him that I don't make money on it and that I only write it for my pleasure but he very, very politely said that no, he would rather not. I told him that was perfectly fine and it was but I wish I could share his beautiful face with you. He IS very much interested in an online presence and I told him I would give his address. He has recently moved from one location south of Tallahassee to this one. 

The business is named Chez Blums International (named for his wife) and the address is 1350 Mahan Drive, Unit B-4. 
I truly hope that people who may be homesick for the flavors of their grandmothers' kitchens find their way to him. 

And yes, I know. This doesn't sound so crazy but I feel like in trying to show interest and be respectful, I ended up being a little bit ridiculous. Who was this fat old white lady wearing a child's outfit, asking all of these questions, and why? But you know, I wanted so badly to let him share with me what these foods mean to him and how they are part of the place he left behind thirty years ago to move here. 

And when I left I got in my car, never making it to the Indian/Asian store, and ate a few more pieces of chin chin, I realized that I had the flavor of his childhood Christmases in my mouth. 
Which is really sort of beautiful, in a way. 

And now I think I am going to go make a quick soup of all the different leftovers in my refrigerator along with a can of tomatoes. Okay, not all of them. But many. I was going to make a Kung Pao Tofu recipe from the NYT's app but I have so many good leftovers that I need to make use of. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. I really want to tell this story.
Magnolia called me today. She asked me if I had grown up in a very small house. Two rooms and an attic. I said that no, the houses I grew up in had not been large but were not tiny. 
Hmmm...
She did not want to hear this. She is reading "A Little House in the Big Woods" and was convinced that the book had been written about me because surely when I was a little girl, people had to grow gardens and hunt for their food. Right? 
Oh. She was sorely disappointed to learn that no, when I was a little girl we had grocery stores where we could buy our meat and our vegetables and that we had cars and T.V.'s too. No computers, though! And the T.V's were a lot smaller. I said that the times she was talking about were more like a hundred or more years ago, not the sixty-something years ago when I'd been a little girl. 
"Oh," she said. "Yeah. I guess you'd be dead by now."
"Yeah, I would be," I said. 
Grasping her last straw to float her fantasy on she said, "But all of your dolls were made of corn cobs, right?"
Again I had to tell her that no, we not only had baby dolls like hers when I was little, we even had Barbie dolls. 

All of my grandchildren have asked me questions like this which instead of insulting I find charming. August and Levon were shocked to hear that there were roads and cars to drive on them when I was a child, that we did not travel by horse-drawn wagons on paths through the forest. 

I wonder what their grandchildren will ask them? 

Who knows? 
Not me. 

Food. Food, Food, Food, Food, Food

I seem to be on a writing-about-food kick. 
Okay. Let's be honest. It is and has always been apparent that I am obsessed with food and confuse it with love. For others and for myself. What better way to show self-love than to feed oneself in a thoughtful and loving manner.
Okay. Probably a lot of things. 
But I have never, ever been one of those people who, if they only have themselves to fix food for, choose just to have a bowl of cereal for supper. I don't really like cereal so that may not be a good example but you know what I mean. 
So. Reining it in here, those buns at the top of the page are hamburger buns that I made yesterday for the sloppy joes I also made. The buns were very good and the new yeast has been a game changer for me. Things rise! And when was the last time you had sloppy joes? Eighth grade, maybe? Did your school cafeteria serve them? Did you like them? Were you happy on sloppy joe day? 
I liked them okay but there was just...something...about them that seemed a little off. I have no idea what that was. But I'd been thinking about them for awhile and last night I made my own which is so easy to do. I used ground venison rather than beef and besides that there are onions, peppers, ketchup (don't puke, please), Worcestershire sauce, and some spices. 

They were so good. There was also a lovingly prepared salad to go with them so I didn't feel terribly bad about serving them. Just a little bad.

But then, I started my day by meeting Liz at Waffle House. We've been talking about doing this for a very long time and we finally got around to it. 
We sat at that table for probably two hours. We talked and talked and talked and yes, we had Waffle House breakfast. After we'd been there for a good long time and the plates had been cleared, Liz said, "If I order a waffle, will you eat half of it?" 
"I'll taste it," I said. And so she ordered a pecan waffle and it was quickly delivered to the table by Mama Kim (same server we had last time I was at the Waffle House with Glen) and let me tell you something- that waffle was delicious.
And here's a shocking fact- I had never once had a waffle at the Waffle House. 
"You have just ruined my life," I said to Liz as I took a second bite. And then a third. 
We also discovered today that they serve biscuits at the Waffle House. 
What?! I came home and told Glen. He said the same thing. "What?!"

So now we know. But I got raisin toast with apple butter because that's what I eat at Waffle House. 

Liz and I talked so long that this is what the place looked like when we left. 

Practically empty!
When we remarked on this while paying the bill, the cook who took our money explained that January is a slow month for them. Not only have people spent all of their extra income on Christmas, but the resolutions they've made for New Years generally prohibit the sort of food that Waffle House serves. 
"It's okay," he said. "They'll be back. And we will welcome them."

All right. There is a giant bag of life-sustaining cookies on the kitchen island and a camo duffel bag on the guest room bed. You know what that means. Yes. Mr. Moon is going off again to hunt. And fish. This time to Louisiana. He's leaving tomorrow morning and will be back on Monday so this is a short get-away for him. 
He's excited, of course, and we've been extra sweet to each other lately so he goes with a light heart. And cookies. Here's what he and Maurice looked like last night. 

She knows he's leaving because of the duffel bag so she was getting her dad-love last night. 

After I got back from the Waffle House, he and I went to the Wharf, which is yet another restaurant because he had things to do in town and was starving and we wanted to spend some time together. 
"You're probably not hungry, are you?" he asked me. 
"Well, I actually finished eating about three hours ago so I could eat a little something." And we both got very nice salads with shrimp on them and NOT FRIED SHRIMP EITHER!

And then, on to Moon Plaza so he could check on the rats and tomorrow is the Grand Opening of Oak Tree Treasures, the resale store benefiting the hospice, and I finally met the woman who is in charge. What a nice lady and by golly, she was ON IT! So were the other volunteers who were there, getting things ready for tomorrow. 
And guess what? She let me buy the shoes I'd wanted before the official opening and I was so happy. 

I don't think I've told you about my new overalls which you see in that picture. Yes, they are from Duluth Trading Company. Yes, I love them. Yes, I feel like a toddler in a play suit in them. No. I do not care. Everywhere I wear them people say, "I love your overalls!" 

"Me too!" I say. 

They have beautiful things at Oak Tree Treasures. As a commenter posted before, it shouldn't be called a "thrift store" but a "resale store" and that is the truth. No real mind-blowing bargains lurking there but very, very nice things at very reasonable prices. 

After that we went and saw Lily at the Publix liquor store and I got two wonderful hugs from my girl. So it's been a sweet day and I could not be more grateful for it. 

For those of you not fortunate enough to live in the south (hahahahahahahahahaHA!) that is a collard green. Look at the life force in that huge leaf. I should have put in a banana for scale. It is much bigger than a banana and far from the biggest collard green in the garden. To finish up on the food subject (for tonight, at least), I will tell you that I am cooking a pot of greens, collards and other types, for our supper. 
With some other stuff.

Thanks for being here, y'all. I appreciate each and every one of you. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Here We Are Again

After my harangue about this cat the other day, I found her sitting on the bed, waiting for me after I'd had my shower last night. 
"Hello," I said. She looked at me through those golden eyes of hers. "Do you want to sleep with me tonight?"
She didn't say a thing. She just stayed where she was and I got into the bed and arranged my legs beside her. She did not make her pissed-off sound nor did she leap away in anger. She did not approach me for petting and I did not offer it. She slept there all night and stayed for awhile after I got up this morning. 
She's just so...unpredictable except for the fact that the odds are very good that if you get your hand or arm around her, she's going to grab it and try to bite it. Eventually. 
I do love her in a very weird and probably victim-type way. "I know she loves me! She does! She just doesn't know how to show it! She had a terrible childhood!" 
Etc. 
And yet- no one should put up with a partner who gets violent just because they had a horrible childhood. 
I know, I know. 
Not the same with a cat. Not at all. 

It's been a pretty sweet day. Mr. Moon left early to go out on the Wacissa with a friend of his and when he got home this evening, he told me that it had been a nearly perfect day. He also told me that it was his sanctuary- going out on the river like that. They saw no other people the entire day. They fished and returned all they caught to the water and when he was telling me about how wonderful it had been, his eyes welled up. And then mine did too. 
Mr. Moon is an outdoorsman. By any definition, he is. I think he is probably more at home in the woods and on the water than he is at anywhere else on earth. 
I never, ever thought I'd marry a man who'd fit that description and yet forty years after doing exactly that, I can't imagine how I could love anyone more. 
Life is funny, isn't it? 

Jessie came out today to get some things to wear for a party they're going to this weekend. It's a murder mystery party and Jessie is playing a rich fancy lady of some sort. I have some sparkly costume jewelry from when I was in plays and we went through those things and she choice a few pieces. They brought back such memories to me. But in a good way, mostly. As I was going through a vintage purse I'd used as when I was in Casablanca, I said, "Wow. That was a different life."

She said, "You've had a lot of lives." 

She was right. I have. 

And then we went to lunch in Monticello. We chose the Mexican because it's always good and it's such a cheerful place. 
We chose well. Honestly, Rancho Grande has such good food. And of course we talked and talked. We had to laugh when we discovered that we're both listening to books by the same author- Sally Rooney. Sarah from Sussex recommended one of her books in a comment a few days ago and I am enjoying it very much. 

Let me just say though- lots and lots and lots of sex! So don't say you weren't warned! And also, lots and lots and lots of emails between two friends discussing everything from climate change to the meaning of life and everything in between. I've never read anything quite like it. An epistolary novel, for sure, but in the modern sense. 

And then she had to get back to town to take the boys to get their flu shots and I busied myself with a few things here. 

Although it was gray and overcast earlier in the day, it cleared later on in the afternoon, and following my friend Ross's advice to "look up" I saw this.

**********************

I am heartbroken but not really shocked at the news about Neil Gaiman. I have to tell you that my opinion of men is not getting better as I age. I do understand that men, in the evolutionary sense are programmed and wired one way while society and culture tell them they must act in away that does not really reflect that. Which in fact, often clashes horribly with it. 
However. Cruelty and abuse are never, ever to be rationalized. 
Of course, all of the allegations against him are indeed allegations, as yet unproven. But at this point in my life, I tend to believe the victims. And when the perpetrator is a person of power, fame, reknown, a man, and of great talent, a whole big segment of society would really rather not. 

That's all I have to say tonight.

Love...Ms. Moon